Our house is a traditional 1960s rambler style house, and one of the things that has bugged me about it for a long time is a little half-wall right inside the front door. It’s been somewhat useful to have, but it breaks up the living room area in a weird way and made the entryway feel small. So on Sunday, we decided to get rid of it once and for all.

Thankfully, removing a half-wall is pretty straightforward. You simply bash out the wall portion, and then use a sawzall to cut through the nails holding the mounting studs. I had the main section of the wall pulled down in about 20 minutes. Doing the final touches took a little bit longer since I had to get my blade behind the stud on the wall to cut the nails away. I also ran into a weird issue on the other end of the wall, where the stud was mounted all the way into the floor joists, almost as if it was a load bearing wall. I had to cut it off as low as I could, since I wasn’t about to tear into joists.

Once I had everything cleared away and cleaned up, it was time to put in a new piece of wood to take the place of the missing floor. We’re getting a new tile floor put in this winter, but until then we just needed something flat to cover with rugs. I got a 3/4″ piece of fiberboard and cut it to size and screwed it down. I then took an old left-over piece of drywall and mounted it to the wall so we can start taping and mudding it back into a presentable fashion.

It took a few hours to get it all done, and a few trips to Home Depot (of course), but in the end I love what it does to the room. The living room feels like a completely different place, and the entryway space now feels like it’s own area. When we put down some nice ceramic tile over the winter it will help to create a great flow between the rooms, and give us a LOT more space to use as an entry/mudroom type space. We’re going to add some nice storage, and a bench, to complete the entryway feel.

Felt great to do some of this work myself, despite being sore today. Looking forward to the next step in the process.